The Commercial Advantage of EQ in An AI Driven World
By Helen Wada with Nancy Glynn
For the latest episode of Human Wise, I sat down with Nancy Glynn. Executive development coach and advisor, Nancy is a Founding Fellow of the Institute Of Coaching and Founder of human-centred, high-performance leadership consultancy, Dynallia.
10 to 15 years ago, conversations around emotional and relational intelligence were seen as “soft and fluffy”. Now, however, with generative AI able to carry out many of the day-to-day responsibilities, they are becoming increasingly important.
Nancy: “It’s a misnomer to categorise them [emotional and relational intelligence] as the soft skills, because actually they're the harder skills. And they're also the more necessary skills.”
This blog explores how we can hone in on these necessary skills, and why it’s so important.
What is the commercial advantage of high EQ?
Science tells us that emotions are the most prevalent factor in our decision making. This means that high EQ levels constitute better decision making – meaning more productivity, efficiency and achievement.
Nancy referenced to a study conducted in 2011, which examined the influence of emotions on the decision making and performance of traders in four London investment banks.
The study found that the traders who were able to regulate their emotions were much higher performing (in some cases earning ten times more) than those who were unable to. The study even called effective emotional regulation a “critical success factor” in trading. Of course, emotional regulation to aid decision making is vital in any sector, as Nancy explained.
Nancy: “A lot of what we do is related to decision making. And certainly in sales organisations it's about... helping the customer to come to a decision that you think is going to be to their greatest advantage.”
How to increase your EQ
So we’ve seen the business case for high EQ – but how do we actually increase our emotional intelligence in order for us to perform at our most effective?
Nancy shared three top tips.
1 – Find your motivation
Nancy: “The first step would be for the professional or the leader to find their motivation. One of the greatest motivators I find is if they increase their knowledge of how important this is... Nearly every evidence-based leadership model shows that this is critical.”
And the research is certainly there to support the importance of this skill:
➔ 90% of high performers at the workplace possess high emotional intelligence.
➔ 75% of Fortune 500 companies use emotional intelligence training and testing.
➔ Salespeople with high EQ produced twice the revenue of those with average or below-average scores.
➔ 87% of millennials today are motivated by the emotional intelligence of their leaders to help the company succeed.
2 – Explore and nuance your own emotional profile
Nancy: “Secondly, either on their own or working with someone else such as an executive coach, begin to explore their emotional profile. One of the things [that is] very interesting is that people who regulate and work with their emotions most effectively actually have a lot of nuance in their emotion.”
It’s a disservice to ourselves to confine our emotions to the basics – angry, sad, happy. We must allow ourselves to feel the full scope of our emotions, even at work. Of course boundaries and management tools are important – after all, an emotional outburst is not appropriate in the office. But acknowledging the full range and complexity of our emotions, in combination with the correct tools to deal with them, allows us to show up as our best selves.
For more information on how you can explore your emotional profile and equip yourself with the tools to manage it to your advantage, please get in touch.
3 – Pay attention to your emotions and the impact on others
Nancy: “Thirdly, I encourage people to recognise or start discovering how their emotional barometer is affecting them in terms of their effectiveness, their capability, the achievement of the goals they seek. And – very importantly – how it is affecting others around them.”
In creating an awareness of our emotions, we unlock the ability to effectively dial them up and down – in other words to “switch channels” when an emotional response is unproductive in favour of a healthier one.
Our emotions do impact others. In fact, this is a phenomenon known as “emotional contagion”. Humans are perceptive creatures, and we pick up on the non-verbal cues of others, which influence our own emotional reactions. When we are in a positive state of mind – or able to consciously bring ourselves back to one – we can encourage the same in others.
How?
Rewriting the script
Nancy: “We are in fact the writer, the producer, the director and the actors in what we’re making up about what is going on for ourselves. That’s great news because it means we can practise rewriting the script.”
Rewriting the script means looking back on our day, or week, and noticing the moments we were unproductive, or behaved, in ways that aren't aligned with the person we want to be or the goals we want to achieve.
In the work I do with my coaching clients, I talk a lot about shifting, which is a form of mindfulness. It can be incredibly difficult sometimes to untangle and understand our feelings and emotions. In these instances, I recommend “shifting” by:
➔ Pausing – taking a moment to focus on the breath or another of your senses.
➔ Reflecting – what might the other person/people be feeling or going through in this moment?
➔ Changing the environment – going for a walk outside, taking a break.
➔ Physically moving – releasing stagnant energy with movement.
The impact of “shifting” our attention is that it allows us to change any negative narrative we might be writing. We are constantly creating a narrative about ourselves and what is going on around us – and the crucial thing to be aware of with this is that the script we write isn’t always true.
Building habits – 3 minutes a day is enough
Nancy: “Certainly for senior professionals and leaders, it’s highly recommended to build some kind of reflective or contemplative practice. It can be three minutes or five minutes a day where they really are pausing and doing something to bring them into the present moment… It’s a muscle like any other. So if we’re exercising the muscles that are the runaway narrative they’re only going to get stronger. In counterbalance, if we are exercising moments of pause, that means we can activate this muscle when the run[away narrative] is starting, and bring it back – switch lanes.”
The act of recognising your mind is wandering is actually a really positive step in building your EQ muscle. It is natural for our minds to wander. Recognising that this happens and bringing yourself back to focus is a great way of creating the right habit and mind muscle.
As Nancy pointed out in the interview, we all have a really powerful tool within our own minds that we can harness and use to our advantage: the ability to rewrite our narrative.
It’s all about awareness, not just of your own emotions, but the impact on others - as well as having a repertoire of techniques to build your own EQ muscle in this world where generative AI is here to stay.
Nancy: “Ask yourself how you can tap into your own human essence. It’s there – how can I re-acquaint myself with it - and step into this challenge?”
Start with your own education and exploration of the human mind – which is the aim of the Human Wise podcast. So join us as we have more of these conversations to discover how we can make our unique human advantage our commercial advantage.
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The full conversation with Nancy Glynn is available here.
For more information on Nancy, head over to LinkedIn or visit Dynallia.
Human Wise releases new episodes bi-weekly and is available on all major podcast platforms.